The Oyo State Government has announced plan to adopt the strategy of self-policing as against the use of regular security agents in ensuring compliance to curtail the spread of Coronavirus.
The strategy, the government noted, would entail people reporting cases of non-compliance to the COVID-19 protocols, especially in corporate organisations and gatherings to the government.
According to the government, the new strategy is aimed at forestalling the harassment of members of the public by security agents in the name of enforcing government directives.
Chairman, Oyo State COVID-19 Decontamination and Containment Committee Prof. Olanike Adeyemo stated these during the training of Environmental Health Officers as staff of the decontamination response team.
She explained that despite the total interstate lockdown, people were still able to move around and leading to the spread of the virus as a result of compromise on the part of the security agencies empowered to enforce the lockdown.
Prof. Adeyemi, who is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research, Innovation and Strategic Partnership, University of Ibadan, said members of the team were being positioned to work from their various local government councils and local council development authorities in a bid to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic.
Said she, “Every local government has an environmental officer. These are the people that are being trained because they are the staff of Oyo State that are ready to take up the task as front-liners on behalf of the state. We will do it across geographical zones.
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“We knew what happened when we had an inter-state lockdown. This COVID -19 is another avenue for some people to extort the people and harass them, but we are not ready for that.
“People were moving and they just needed to give money to security agents at every checkpoint.
“What we are advocating is self-policing.”
Deputy Chief of Staff to Governor Seyi Makinde, Mojeed Mogbonjubola said, “It is quite unfortunate that the pandemic is spreading like wildfire and we couldn’t really contain it alone in Ibadan. What the governor is doing in conjunction with the University of Ibadan is to extend the committee to all zones in the state.”
